Getting to know you....

I’ve made up some questions I’d ask me if I did not know me to help readers pick up what I’m lay’n down.

Why Move’n on Mom?

As you can see from my first post, the road of my life has had its share of pot holes, detours and 20 car pile ups. Sometimes on the road of life your car breaks down in Hills Have Eyes territory. These things do happen. But you don’t live in that moment forever. You don’t get down, get stymied and lose all hope. You gather your wits, get your bearings and you move on. You may have to do it by foot. Perhaps the ending theme music to the Hulk plays and makes you a little unsure of your chosen direction, but you move on. So in the name of hope and progress, I chose The Move’n on Mom.

Why Free Range Family?

It is my opinion that society, attitudes and circumstances can become little more than prisons if you allow them to be. I’ve gone free range and I encourage you to do the same. That does not mean you have to tune in and drop out or anything so dramatic (but you can if you like). I just encourage people to think of new solutions to old problems... or old solutions to new problems. I don’t care as long as it works and make you happy.

If you are a housewife, how do you pay the bills?

In the tradition of my foremothers, I pimp out my husband. That is to say, he works as a mental health professional and the director of a small home for special needs individuals. He brings home the bacon; I fry it up in a pan. That is how we roll.

Do you believe all families should homeschool / unschool?

No. If you really examine your situation and firmly believe it cannot be improved upon, you should do nothing different. But if the system does not work for you, as it did not work for us and frankly does not work for many people, you should try something else. Unschooling is student and experience driven. It does not create passive students. It creates curious and passionate learners. Putting kids in large peer groups for extended periods of their life is just too unnatural. They become peer dependent. The bonds of family breakdown and immature behaviors are modeled as ideal, rather than adult behavior. Commanding them to sit and listen trains the mind to obey blindly and to passively accept information. The student is not responsible for his or her own discovery. It is someone else’s job to teach them. Their own values are replaced with the school’s values and their choices for learning and mastery are limited. If you believe that the most energetic and inquisitive years of a child’s life should be spent on their butts being told what to learn and how to think, then you should not unschool.

Here is another ironic question a man ask me about homeschooling and unschooling:

“What if the parents are racist? Shouldn’t children have to go to school to learn values, just in case the family is corrupt in some way?”

This was ironic because the man was a bisexual single father arguing that schools needed to protect children from their parent’s values and substitute their own “family values”. My mind boggled. I’d heard that sentiment before, but never from a parent in his position. 30 years ago he’d have lost his parental rights because of society’s values. His son would have been told that his father was a pervert and a criminal. Yet, he’s a great dad who loves his son and provides a wholesome home despite the challenges of raising a child alone. Is that where we are as a society? Do we all distrust ourselves and our fellows so much? Do we really believe that kids must be protected from their parents as a rule? Has family become a thing to be feared and suppressed? Are we the thought police? My answer is, no. I hate to think that people are raising their kids to be racist, homophobic, sexist or to have any other irrational bias. I’m sure they are, though. Those things happen and most people don’t like it. Still, I don’t have the right to tell any person to raise their kids against their own conscience and beliefs. The schools are government institutions. They do not exist to counteract our raise’n. Teachers are there to teach, not to parent your kids for you. (I’m sure they’d love to say that to a lot of parent’s faces, but they can’t.) That means they are not there to tell you your parents need a different religion, sexuality or attitude. When it comes to families, so long as no one is being criminally neglected or abused we have the right to tend our own knitting and that is all.